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This study aims to explore the disciplinary characteristics of doctoral students’ generic skills learning experience at a Finnish university.

An online survey measuring doctoral students’ generic skills learning experience was administered to all doctoral students of the university and 1,184 responses were obtained. The study conducted exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, principal component analysis and heatmap analyses.

The results suggested three major trends. First, students’ scores for research integrity skills were consistently lower in the hard sciences, such as biological and environmental sciences, pharmacy, veterinary medicine, science and medicine. Second, students of the law showed a unique trend; their scores for research integrity, leadership and entrepreneurship skills learning were remarkably higher than those in other faculties, but they had the lowest scores for communication skills.

The data represented students at one Finnish university, so institutional and geographical differences fell beyond the scope of this paper. Furthermore, the results could reflect either the authentic levels of students’ acquired skillsets or self-interpretation of experiences governed by their disciplinary values. Accordingly, the immediate generalisability of the findings to individuals and different contexts should carefully be considered.

The findings can contribute to improve doctoral training practices. In addition, the survey results are useful for the further development of inventories, as doctoral students’ engagement in generic skills development has been attracting attention in higher education.

Describes the main structural lines of the Brussels master′s programme in human ecology. Delineates its relationships with the European Certificate of Human Ecology and the European Association of Human Ecology. In this way describes two complementary networking structures on human ecology (HE) in Europe. This overview of networking structures is complemented by an enumeration of national and international HE organizations in Europe. Discusses the possible involvement of the Society for Human Ecology in two rather recent international developments in the field: the growing number of academic initiatives in East European countries; and the evaluation by international panels of experts of interdisciplinary research products as state of the environment studies which otherwise escape the test of international scientific validation.

The Asia‐Pacific Region is the fastest growing area of the world in economic terms. Unfortunately, it has also suffered from several environmental and occupational health problems largely as a result of this rapid growth without attendant safeguards. Highlights problems such as environmental pollution, those relating to sanitation, cigarette smoking, traffic accidents, poisoning from industrial and agricultural chemicals, noise, health of women workers and other psychosocial problems, and recent trends in the health education and environmental improvements. Concludes with a plea for more attention to and collaboration concerning a clean environment.

This aim of this study was to explore how hospital-based physicians in Sweden experienced the challenges in working conditions related to the provision of care during the initial response to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 when hospitals transitioned to pandemic care.

The study has a qualitative design. Twenty-five hospital-based physicians were interviewed about their experiences from working in a hospital while healthcare organisations initially responded to COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. A thematic analysis was used to analyse the empirical material.

The analysis resulted in four themes: involuntary self-management, a self-restrictive bureaucracy, passive occupational safety and health (OSH) management, and information overload. These themes reflect how the physicians perceived their work situation during the pandemic and how they tried to maintain quality care for their patients.

The study gives valuable insights for formulating preparedness in regard to crisis management plans that can secure the provision of care for future emergencies in the healthcare services.

This paper shows that a crisis management plans in the healthcare services should include decision structures and management, measures of risk assessment and OSH management, and the maintenance of personnel wellbeing. A prepared healthcare management can preserve quality care delivery while under crisis.

This study aims to identify the status of occupational stress among a sample of hospital employees in Iran. It further intended to reveal the harmful effects of occupational stress on employees’ health and well-being.

The study used a cross-sectional research design. A validated questionnaire was used to collect data from hospital employees.

Job-related, working environment, interpersonal and organisational factors were related to occupational stress. One-fourth of employees rated their occupational stress high. The major sources of occupational stress were inadequate pay, inequality at work, too much work, staff shortage, poor recognition and promotion, time pressure, job insecurity and lack of management support. High levels of occupational stress have been linked to an increased risk of physical injuries, cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, depression and increases in negative personal behaviours such as anger, anxiety and irritability. Occupational stress was positively associated with employees’ turnover intentions.

The findings of this study are not generalisable to the wider population of hospital employees in Iran due to the small sample size. Thus, future research should involve additional samples.

The study has practical relevance for designing and implementing strategies to decrease occupational stress among hospital employees.

This article contributes to health care theory and practise by identifying factors contributing to employees’ occupational stress and examining the association between occupational stress and two important employee outcomes – health status and turnover intention.

Breast milk is considered the optimum food for infants during infancy. Pesticide residues may get transferred to infants through breast feeding and pose various serious health hazards. This paper aims to enumerate various pesticides that are present in breast milk and pose potential health risk to breast‐fed infants.

An attempt is been made to highlight various sources of pesticide exposure, their mechanism of transfer to breast milk and the possible health hazards to breast‐fed infants. Techniques to reduce the incidence of pesticides in foods are also outlined.

The exposure of lactating mothers to pesticides from various sources and their detection in breast milk poses various health risks to breast‐fed infants. Infants and younger children are more prone to pesticide poisoning than adults due to quantitative differences in absorption, metabolism, detoxification and excretion.

Adopting precautionary measures and minimising the application of persistent organic pollutants, breast milk could be prevented from pesticide exposure and thus could be recommended safe for infant feeding.

The paper shows that the protection of mothers from pesticide exposure would reduce the incidence of pesticides in breast milk, thus conferring health safety to breast‐fed infants.

The rail driver workplace is full of challenges for effective health management. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how known barriers in rail driving may be overcome by seeking enablers of positive health status and lifestyle.

Five focus groups were conducted with 29 rail drivers from four rail organisations across three Australian states. Transcribed data were analysed using directed content analysis and thematic coding to develop health enabler themes and categories.

Formal initiatives to manage health were piecemeal. Efforts to maintain health involved countering deteriorative, and promoting restorative, health factors. Themes systematically illustrated work environmental, adaptational, and autonomous features of health management. Participants expressed many different approaches to enabling positive health status, and how these connected to known barriers.

Discussion of personal health issues within the rail industry is considered a taboo topic by some, therefore participants who took part in this study data may be more representative of health-conscious drivers.

Occupational health in rail can be enabled in multiple ways, including: improving social support, scheduling certainty, and cross-communication around health behaviours; increasing flexibility and environmental support for health behaviours; and directly promoting dietary control and physical activity engagement. Given the diversity and global representativeness of rail systems found within Australia, the findings have international application.

This study uses a strength-focussed approach to highlight multiple leverage points for organisational rail-driver health interventions across three levels of the system, helping improve health intervention efficacy despite the intractable nature of their environments.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze job-related stress, motivation and satisfaction in higher education institutions, and assesses their implications on health in various industries including higher education. In total, 52 higher education faculty and administrators from institutions in more than 16 countries participated in the study that utilized the organizational surveys, Organizational Effectiveness Inventory® from human synergistics. Subgroup analysis was done to compare faculty and administrators; males to females, private, public, for-profit and not-for-profit institutions.

To assess health implications, 160 respondents employed in seven industries were surveyed using a custom medical/stress questionnaire to collect self-reported data on levels of job-related stress, motivation and satisfaction as well as the presence of several medical conditions, including myocardial infarction, stroke, angina pectoris/coronary heart disease, hypertension, gastro-esophageal reflux disease and diabetes mellitus. The results from each of the two surveys were statistically analyzed separately.

Results show undesirable levels of job-related stress, motivation and satisfaction in some segments of higher education employees; as well as associations between poorer health and high stress levels. The study established a potential justification consequently, the authors recommend organizational offerings of: stress relief programs; health fairs and health club memberships; stress management workshops; use of mobile apps for stress relief; job description reviews to eliminate work-related demands; changes to managerial styles that align with the culture of employees; re-evaluation of organizational structure; and enhanced communication amongst workplace management and employees.

Limitations of this study include small sample sizes and the presence of confounding factors that were not considered. In addition, this study did not look into whether occupational position or occupational difficulty compromised the nature of work causing employees to experience lower levels of satisfaction, since the extent to which employees feel satisfied with their work may influence their physical well-being.

There are a number of factors that can affect employees with regards to medical illnesses in a job-related setting. There are three factors in particular that have been shown to negatively affect the health of employees: job-related stress; motivation; and satisfaction. These effects have not been studied in depth in faculty and administrators of higher education institutions, hence this study seeks to achieve that.

Three main objectives of this study were as follows: (1) To estimate the prevalence rate of post-traumatic stress disordered (PTSD) symptoms among Saudi paramedics, (2) To investigate which types of coping strategies were associated with PTSD symptoms among Saudi paramedics, (3) To explore which sources of social support were associated with PTSD symptoms among Saudi paramedics.

Data were collected from 217 paramedics working in the Saudi Red Crescent Authority from September to December 2019. Participants completed questionnaires measuring PTSD symptoms (the Screen of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorders; SPTSD), passive and active coping strategies (Brief COPE Scale; BC), and three forms of social support: support from friends, family and organizational support. Associations between coping strategies, social support and PTSD symptoms were investigated using correlational analyses, hierarchical linear regression and binary logistic regression.

46% of participants experienced one or more PTSD symptom, 28.6% scored above the cut-off for partial PTSD and 17.5% scored above the cut-off for full PTSD. PTSD symptoms were significantly positively correlated with passive coping and negatively associated with both family and friends support. Passive coping was positively associated with a greater risk of meeting criteria for PTSD.

The current findings suggest that interventions to help reduce PTSD in Saudi paramedics should include strategies to reduce passive coping. Future research is urgently required to help understand the psychological, social and work-related factors that contribute to these high levels of PTSD.